I have been looking through microsoft's msdn as well as app hub trying to learn xna. The tutorials are mostly focused on windows phone 7 and xbox and don't go into depth that much. What are some good reads for someone who is interested in learning to make games for both the Zune HD as well as windows phone 7 but has never learned any prgramming languages? I need a book that is easy to understand for someone who has never done any coding. Also, is it easier to make the game in xna 2010 then port it to 2008 or vice versa?

I own this book and it is fairly useful for a beginner to programming, but it doesn't get very advanced so I lost use for it quickly when I got up to speed.

The important thing to note is that I don't believe there is a single book which teaches you how to program for the Zune HD. The Help files don't do much either in that respect. I've tried to write up tutorials before. If you like I can gather them up and repost them here. Unlike with Windows Phone, the touchscreen and accelerometer are interfaced with on a more basic level which makes them less intuitive (or at least less easy) to understand and program for.

Some other things to know: The Zune HD runs on XNA 3.1, not the latest 4.0. XNA 3.1 is only available in Visual Studio 2008. I do not recommend attempting to backport a Visual Studio 2010 project. If you attempt to code in VS2010, you will not be able to test your app on the device as you cannot deploy an XNA 4.0 app to a Zune (or anything made in 2010, for that matter).

If you are a college or eligible highschool student, you can acquire Visual Studio 2008 Professional from www.dreamspark.com legitimately from Microsoft for free. I recommend the professional edition over the already free Visual C# Express Edition because the Professional edition includes more refractor commands and other useful features. If you're new to Visual Studio, though, you probably don't know what a refrator is... and you probably won't need to use one when you're starting out. So either Professional or Express will be fine, but make sure it's C#.

[QUOTE=FallenArms3;555306]I own this book and it is fairly useful for a beginner to programming, but it doesn't get very advanced so I lost use for it quickly when I got up to speed.

QUOTE]

Another thing I noticed is that there are a lot of books that say game studio 3.0. I thought the HD was 3.1, I wasn't sure if the 3.0 would cover the zune's touch screen. So I'm assuming this book would cover Zune HD, or would you have to change the input controls for the touch screen?

I own this book and it is fairly useful for a beginner to programming, but it doesn't get very advanced so I lost use for it quickly when I got up to speed.

Another thing I noticed is that there are a lot of books that say game studio 3.0. I thought the HD was 3.1, I wasn't sure if the 3.0 would cover the zune's touch screen. So I'm assuming this book would cover Zune HD, or would you have to change the input controls for the touch screen?

That's what the rest of my quote is about: there are no books that I know of which cover the Zune HD's touchscreen. Basically, very few people care about it. If you need help with that you can scan ZuneBoards (where most Zune devs are), and in the meantime I will try to compile a nice tutorial on how to effectively use the touchscreen.

That's what the rest of my quote is about: there are no books that I know of which cover the Zune HD's touchscreen. Basically, very few people care about it. If you need help with that you can scan ZuneBoards (where most Zune devs are), and in the meantime I will try to compile a nice tutorial on how to effectively use the touchscreen.

Thank you so much!! This is very helpful, and I would have to agree it is a masterpiece . I will have to check out Zuneboards for more information, as you mentioned. Can't say this enough but thank you for spending your time to clearly explain everything, I know it took a lot of time to write.